


The Bones, The Blood, The City

by saltslimes



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, weirdly Jason-centric for a Tim fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick is Batman, Tim is Red Robin and Jason, although he knows he ought to get out of the city, can't seem to leave Gotham alone. And he can't seem to stand watching the replacement wear himself into the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely following the Marcus To Red Robin run canon, but I mixed in some of Red Hood and the Outlaws. And I dumped Battle for the Cowl, largely.

There’s no city quite like Gotham. Whenever Jason complained, Roy would give him one of those “you’re-utterly-insane” looks, like he must have gotten his brain addled by the Lazarus pit. Well, dying makes you sentimental maybe. Or Jason was always a sap. Roy seemed firmly convinced it was the latter.

The thing is, there really _is_ no city like Gotham. In all the good ways and the bad. Maybe more in bad ways than in good ways, but there’s something in the air, something in the rain-slicked streets and the alleys and the rooftops that sings: _welcome home,_ every time Jason comes back, and Roy’s an addict, so he could recognize self-destructive habits when he saw them, but he graciously said nothing.

“You know, there’s plenty of crimes to solve in Bludhaven,” Roy said off-handedly. _Especially since Nightwing isn’t patrolling these days_ , remained unspoken. Jason shrugged from the kitchen table, where he was stripping his weapons and Roy, seated on the back of the couch re-stringing his bow, heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I’m just saying,” Roy continued. “Dick seems to have things under control.”

 “We don’t know that. We’ve been gone for a month.”

“Well the city’s not on fire. So at least mostly under control,” Roy said. Jason snorted. There was an automated cat noise and a little ping, and Roy slid off the back of the couch to scoop his phone off the table.

“Text from Kori?” Jason asked. Roy grinned.

“She says hi. And like five smiley faces,” he said.

“Tell her not to set anything on fire,” Jason said. “She’s supposed to be doing recon.”

“Yeah by the way Jay, Kori is a weird choice for recon. What with her you know, flame hair and general explosiveness.”

“She attracts attention. And I want to know who’s exactly is patrolling Gotham streets right now, and what their agendas are,” Jason said.

“Right,” Roy said, dropping into the seat beside Jason. The cat noise sounded again. Jason drummed his fingers on the table while Roy checked the text.

“Hey, you ever heard of Red Robin?” he asked.

“ _What_?”

 

 

Jason shifted his position a little, lying on his belly on the rooftop. It wasn’t raining, but it wasn’t warm either, and he’d been there for at least an hour, watching these goons outside the warehouse loading product into a van. He could have taken a shot about a hundred times, but he’d been waiting instead. The goons weren’t actually his target, they were more like bait. Although bait implies he set a trap, and rather he was just an observer, like a national geographic photographer, lurking in the bushes by a gazelle corpse, waiting for a scavenger to come by.

And the scavenger arrived, sure enough, a flash of red and black, and the telltale whirr of batarangs cutting the air. Jason peered through his rifle sights and frowned. That had to be the replacement. Which meant that the rumours about the new robin in town were true. Which meant, somehow the replacement got replaced. And then immediately swiped another one of Jason’s cast off identities. _Better be careful not to die, or he’ll be running around as Red Hood next_ , Jason thought.

 

 

Jason started keeping tabs on the kid as a sort of unofficial side project on nights that Roy was at AA meetings. For no particular reason. A mixture of boredom and curiosity. And something like pride or possessiveness over an old costume. No, he wasn’t using Red Robin and he wasn’t planning on it, so it didn’t really matter, but at the same time, he couldn’t help thinking: _where does Timothy Drake-Wayne-Whatever get off, thinking he’s welcome to any identity I’m not currently using?_ It wasn’t about the Robin thing. He recognized that that was about Bruce (everything is). It was a little bit about the Robin thing. He wondered how replacement liked it, now that he’d been replaced.

Jason broke into the manor on the pretence of doing a little recon, and at Roy’s suggestion that he couldn’t avoid his family forever.

“What family?” he snorted, at Roy’s suggestion. Roy gave him a withering look, and chucked one of their takeout spoons at his head. Jason thought about Alfred polishing silverware, and then, barely six hours later, found himself on one of the manor ledges, sliding open a window. By his count, he had ninety seconds to get inside and close that window before his override on the security system timed out.

“Yesss,” Jason hissed, as he dropped soundlessly onto the carpet in the hallway. Then he looked up. He was looking at Alfred. Alfred was holding a duster, and wearing his pink apron. Same one as ever. Or a perfect replica. Gift for father’s day maybe. From Dick, or even Bruce. Or one of the new little brats.

“Jason,” Alfred said, duster shaking a little in his grip.

“Uh. Hi Alfie,” Jason said, his gaze suddenly and magnetically drawn to the carpet. How does that happen? It’s like one second he was Red Hood, slipping into the manor in full combat gear, and next he had a pressing urge to assure Alfred that he’s eating right and cleaning his room. Which would be, largely a lie, because he ate mostly takeout and no matter how much he cleaned, hurricane Roy would manage to leave socks and bow equipment and wet towels everywhere, but still, he imagined saying it. As if he was fifteen all of a sudden.

And then next thing he knew Alfred was hugging him which, felt awesome, and also, made his chest cramp up uncomfortably, and also, made him feel like he could smell coffin wood again, and also, made him ache disgustingly for something, a hunger devouring him from the inside. Jason broke the hug, if only because he thought if it went on a second longer he might die all over again.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said. For a moment, he was all smiles, and then recollection seemed to trickle in, as if he were so happy to see Jason that he momentarily forgot the whole murderer-vigilante Red Hood thing. “Master Richard is not in the manor,” he said, and Jason wondered if he meant it like “Dad’s not home so no worries” or “Dick isn’t here, if you came to kill him or something.” Then Alfred winked, and Jason thought: _holy shit, this is the guy who half-raised me, and he’s utterly bonkers._

“I just came to ah, get something of mine. But I figure my room isn’t… there anymore,” Jason said, rubbing the back of his neck. Alfred raised an eyebrow. Then he straightened up, right back into competent butler mode as if he hadn’t been hugging Jason on the edge of tears a second earlier.

“If you’d follow me, please,” he said, and they tread the painfully familiar hallway, the carpet barely more worn than when Jason… left, and Alfred opened the door to his room. It was clean, but other than that… no, including that, it was exactly the way Jason had left it. There was a book still on the bedspread, that he had been reading what felt like a century ago. Philip K. Dick, _A Scanner Darkly_. He never finished it. He realized that if he were to walk over and pick it up, he’d find a page dog-eared halfway in, marking his place. It felt like a gut-punch, just remembering.

“I can’t imagine why you’d think your memory was something we could… sweep under the rug so easily,” Alfred said. Jason swallowed. His saliva felt thick.

“Yeah. I don’t know why. Somehow I thought maybe replacement was camped out here. Call me crazy,” he said.

“Master Timothy has his own room at the manor, whenever he wishes to return to it,” Alfred said. Jason turned around to look at him.

“Return to it?”

“We haven’t seen much of him since… Well.” _Batman’s disappearance._ So the demon spawn getting Robin wasn’t a unanimous decision. Not that those ever existed in the batcave. Dick wasn’t Bruce, but he was Batman, and Batman had a way of just, well, deciding things. Firmly.

A door opened somewhere downstairs. Alfred turned at the sound of it and Jason, feeling slightly guilty, made a break for it. While he was scaling down the manor he tried to imagine how he would have reacted if Bruce had replaced him _while_ he was alive.

“Can’t replace this,” he mumbled into his helmet.

 

 

When he got back to the apartment, Roy was asleep on the couch and Kori was burning pancakes.

“Why am I the only one who can cook?” Jason moaned, while waving a magazine at the smoke detector. A second later, an arrow impaled it. “Thanks Roy, there goes our security deposit.”

“I thought we lost that when you punched through your bedroom wall last week,” Kori said. Her memory was perfect whenever it was inconvenient for Jason, apparently.

“You’re the best cook because you’re team mom,” Roy said. Jason kicked him off the couch. From the floor, Roy threw a rubber-tipped arrow at him. It smacked Jason in the forehead. He sighed.

“I can’t believe this is what I came back to life for.”

“Yeah, not everyone has a bigger purpose and a huge mission and it sucks, now help me up so we can eat Kori’s burnt pancakes.”

“They’re just a little overdone, they’re not burnt!” Kori insisted. Jason helped Roy up. They ate the pancakes, which were definitely burnt, and Jason got fake maple syrup on his fingers and Kori got icing sugar on her nose. It was all unbelievably good.

That night they went and busted up a human trafficking ring and it was the kind of win that always makes Jason think he’ll be able to sleep easy, thinking of those girls getting back to their families, and the scumbag pimps that took them now dead, hauled away sealed in plastic, all ready for the morgue. But the truth is he never sleeps easy, no matter how many wins he racks up or how many murderers he puts in the ground.

And this night was no different than any other. He lay in bed exhausted, and he couldn’t stop thinking about his perfectly clean room in the manor, and the book on his bed with the page inside still creased, how it had been creased all this time, and no one ever opened it, and unfolded the page, and put it back on the shelf.

And he felt something in him split up, like there’s a dead Jason still trapped in that suit he knows Bruce keeps in the cave, and then there’s this imposter, whoever he is, sleeping in a rundown apartment in East Gotham and killing because he likes sound people make when they die and it came back to him again, this crawling sick fear that he is just something that woke up inside Jason’s body in the pit, and Jason’s been gone the whole time.

He tossed and turned. The blankets seemed suffocating. At some point, the door creaked open and light spilled across the room, and Roy entered, a sleepy, hunched over shadow. He walked around to the right side of the bed and ruffled Jason’s hair, and then he pushed him over and lay down beside him, at which point Jason realized he was shaking. Roy’s hand found his in the tangle of blankets.

“It’s okay. Feel that?” Roy mumbled, like he was half asleep. Jason was staring eyes-wide at the ceiling, but he forced himself to focus on Roy’s hand in his, sweaty palms and all. “Solid,” Roy said. “That’s you and me, and we’re both fine right now,” Roy said. Jason said nothing.

When they woke up in the morning, Kori was lying across them. Her head was rested on Jason’s stomach and it was heavy and painful and also he had to pee. It felt like: kind of getting better.

 

 

Jason was sweeping up the glass from Kori’s overzealous apartment re-entry when Roy radioed in.

“I can help. Let me help, I feel sorry,” Kori said, hopping over the table to snatch the radio off the couch.

“Fine, here,” Jason said, offering up the broom and holding out a hand for the radio. Kori tossed it to him. He gave her the broom.

“Don’t step on any,” he warned. Kori snorted. “Arsenal, status?”

“You don’t have to be sooo serious Jaybird, it’s been years since you worked with bats.”

“Did you need something, or can I get back to the dishes which incidentally, you promised to do?”

“Need you to pull up a security feed for me. I don’t wanna get ambushed.”

“Fine, gimme the details,” Jason said, flipping open Roy’s laptop.

“All clear at the moment—wait. Two security guards. They’re gonna move though, I’ll tell you when.”

“Thanks.” Jason sat in silence for a few moments, just watching two pixelated figures on screen.

“I had a run in with your little brother, by the way,” Roy said, conversationally. Even through the buzz of the radio, Jason swore he could hear that shit-eating grin.

“Replacement’s _not_ my brother,” he said.

“What? Oh, I meant the demon-kid. I was going to ask about the other one though. Red Robin. You know we haven’t seen him in a while? I heard a rumour he’s left the city.” Jason frowned at the screen. The figures moved, vanished down the hall.

“You’re all clear, go now,” he said.

“Thanks, I’m out,” Roy responded. The radio cut out. In the silence following it, the absence of the static seemed to echo a little.

“You wanna go out later?” Kori asked, tiptoeing over to lay her body across the back of the couch.

“My shoulder’s still kinda fucked up from falling down that fire escape last night,” Jason said.

“I meant out to get a drink, go dancing or something.”

“Then my answer still stands, right?” Jason said, flipping open a few recent security feeds from popular bat-hangouts. Everyone had a favourite rooftop or so, and you’d be an idiot not to make some attempt to keep track. Kori huffed an exaggerated sigh.

“Roy might still be up for it when he gets back. Or you know, you can just go on your own.”

“You’re not going to lecture me about keeping a low-profile?”

“I’ve given up. Just don’t smash the window this time,” Jason said.

“You worried about Red Robin?” Kori asked, after watching Jason scan feeds for a minute.

“I thought you were helping.”

“I don’t know where the pan thingy is. The dust-pan.”

“It’s in the cupboard by the bathroom.”

“Where do I trade you in for a teammate who’s fun?” Kori whined, stomping away.

“You picked _me_ , remember?” Jason called after her. But he kept his eyes on the feeds.

 

 

Jason kept an ear to the ground about Red Robin for a week. Nothing. Wherever the kid was, he wasn’t patrolling. Maybe out of the city. Maybe he had kid shit to do. Far too sharp memories of high school resurfaced while he was restocking his first aid kit. Wanting to go out for sports and plays and stuff. Although if the papers were to be believed, the replacement was more tied up with running Wayne industries than any kinda after school activities Gotham Academy had to offer.

Jason slid a second roll of gauze into the kit and flipped the lid down. His eyes flicked over to his phone. Roy and Kori were in Star City tracking down the leader of some drug ring that Roy had been on the hunt for for a while. Jason insisted on sticking around Gotham. Dick was doing a good job under the cowl, but still, something felt weird about leaving the city alone.

Which was kind of fucking ridiculous, because he hated Gotham, the city that engineered his death, and his shitty family, and the batman. And yet. He kind of loved Gotham. And not in the weird, obsessive protector way like Bruce. He loved Gotham as in the streets, and the weird gothic buildings and the hot dog carts. He loved the people even. Everyone who sticks around Gotham is a little insane, to be sure. But Gotham citizens were tough as nails. Anyone who lived in the same city as the joker and didn’t move kind of had to be.

Jason flipped open his phone. No messages. Which meant either Kori and Roy were fine, or they were dead or tied up in a warehouse somewhere. Jason sighed, grabbed his gun off the table, and swiped his hood off the kitchen counter. He wanted to get blood and gunpowder on himself.

 

A few weeks later, Red Robin resurfaced. Jason was smoking on a rooftop when he heard someone land, skidding a little on the gravel.

“Oh shit,” he heard, and then looked around to see the replacement, kinda poised like he was about to dive back off the roof. He wished he had his helmet on. But damn, if he’s not gonna kill the perps he’s gotta smoke.

So they just stood there for a moment, Red Robin tensed like he’s about to grab a batarang and Red Hood with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

“Uh,” Jason finally said.

“I’m just—going this way,” Red Robin said, pointing. Jason took the cigarette out of his mouth and chucked it off the roof.

“Relax, kid,” he said. Replacement shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You’ve been missing in action lately. Did Golden Boy—sorry, Golden _Man_ bench you?”

“I’m not working with him anymore,” Tim said. He charged forward and Jason steeled himself for an attack, but Tim ducked him, fired his line and took off. “And I’ve got shit to do!” he called over his shoulder. Jason leaned on the edge of the roof for a minute, watching black cape vanishing into the dark.

“Huh,” he said. Then he lit up another cigarette. Couple hours later he ran into Dick and the demon spawn busting up a human trafficking ring, but they didn’t talk. The kid threw a knife at Jason’s head.

Later in his apartment he rubbed a thumb over the big score it had cut through the paint. Kid had good aim, if nothing else.

He went to sleep easy, and then he woke up choking on a scream, with laughter in his ears and the taste of earth and sawdust in his mouth. He dry heaved into the toilet a few times and then got in the shower.

He ended up skimming through security feeds on the city, even though he wasn’t really looking for anything or anyone. The sky outside turned baby blue, and light leaked through his blinds. And then he spotted Red Robin on one of the feeds, perched on a rooftop eating a sandwich. Jason squinted at the clock on his laptop. It was six am. But hey, it wasn’t that weird to stay out all night. Jason couldn’t even begin to count the number of times he’d stayed out past sunrise with Bruce, Red Hood days notwithstanding.

Some time around nine he fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, the feeds were predictably free of bat activity.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow update, I know. And it's a little short, but it's been hard to focus on this story lately.

The tear down. It was actually something that Dick gave Jason, although he never knew it. One night really early on, when Nightwing (then a curious presence) had met them on patrol and helped take down Two-Face’s goons. In the cave afterwards Jason, exhausted, had dragged himself towards the showers while Bruce spoke with Alfred about repairs to the batmobile. And Nightwing, leaning on the bank of computers, had nodded Jason’s way.

“Time for the tear-down, right?” he’d said. Sometimes, getting the costume off felt like a construction project. Peel away the mask, unzip the boots, struggle out of the tights. With sprained or broken fingers, it was an incredible effort, and the adrenaline of the night bled out fast, leaving bruises and pulled muscles in its wake.

_The tear down._ Something about that phrasing really stuck with Jason. Because when he put on Robin, he was putting on an identity. And for the next two, four, five hours or more, he was Robin. His laugh was Robin’s laugh and his leaps were Robin’s leaps and the gaps between the buildings didn’t scare him because he was a part of Batman’s great crime fighting machine, a rusty street-made cog that had been polished to a shine.

So in the showers on that locker-room style bench when he peeled Robin away from whoever remained inside the suit, he always though of it as the tear down. Break down the shell of that night’s identity, and find underneath, Jason, tired but still bright eyed, looking like a bruised kid up past his bed time.

 

What seemed like a million years after that kid had existed, and smiled at his own reflection in a steam-fogged mirror, Jason sat on the edge of his bed in his tidy but lifeless apartment and tore down Red Hood. Helmet, boots, gloves, jacket. Dump and strip weapons. The armor last, and then he peeled off the domino he’d forgotten he was wearing.

Sometimes on a roof top he felt like he was able to be more Red Hood than he was ever robin, and he’d imagine this alternate story, where he was no one, just some guy off the street who trained himself and decided to make a difference. Put on the hood for no reason whatsoever. But the story always broke at the domino mask, of all places. Because to wear one like it was your skin, totally forget about it, _that_ , you had to be raised into.

If you were a kid hero then wearing the mask felt like wearing underwear. You might be more comfortable without it, but you didn’t really shake the feeling of being naked.

On the coffee table, his cell buzzed. Maybe three people had his number, so he grabbed it and flipped it open right away.

“Jay, good you’re still up,” Roy’s voice greeted him.

“Hmn,” Jason said.

“You probably just finished, but if you’re planning on hanging around Gotham for the foreseeable future, I got a tip I want you to check out.”

“Roy, I know I said I might meet you but I… Please, can you just tell Kori—”

“Hey, I get it. Gotham isn’t any other city,” Roy said, which, frankly, made no sense. But it also made a lot of sense, in a sort of complicated way. Jason swallowed.

“You said you had something for me?”

“Drug ring. I got a tip from a friend on her way out of the city, I said I knew people who could check it out,” Roy said.

“That’s me,” Jason said. “I’m people.” In this case, at least. Roy gave him the details, and a promise that he would explain Jason’s continued absence to Kori. Jason was confident she would understand. Semi-confident. Kori had loyalty to people. To family, to friends. But not really for places. Jason knew she had trouble reconciling his uncomfortable relationships with Gotham and the bats. Jason had loyalty to places. Or he had something at least, with Gotham. A toxic relationship probably best described it.

 

The next night he followed a few leads but came up dead. His own resources were limited when it came to intel, so while smoking on the rooftop of a diner and bathing himself in the comfortable smell of grease and cooking meat, he made a loose plan to steal some crime data. Hacking Bruce’s system remotely was an impossible task, even if Bruce wasn’t there to maintain it. And with Dick wearing the cowl, his intel was probably horribly out of date and his safehouses neglected. Which left Tim. The easiest target, though only out of process of elimination. 

Jason had a few guesses where Tim’s safehouses might be, but he figured the best way to get the intel he needed (plus the dirt on where Tim stored his supplies) was just to go straight to the source. And Tim’s apartment, he actually did know where to find. He followed Dick there once when they were accidentally working the same case and Jason wanted to make sure he got to the perps before Dick could take them safely to jail.

That seemed like a long time ago now. Jason shook off the memory while he was bypassing Tim’s security. _The kid thinks he knows traps? He’s about a thousand years too early to keep me out_.

He slid in through the window and dropped down, then waited a moment in case he’d triggered something and it just hadn’t gone off yet. Dead silence. The clock on the stove read 0:03. Apparently Tim was the kind of guy who doesn’t put in the effort to change his clock to 12 hour time. That, or he preferred 24 hour time, which was entirely plausible for an elevated Batman fanboy like the replacement.

Jason stepped inside and tread on something soft, and for a terrible second he was afraid he’d either stepped on a cat or triggered some kind of weird soft trap that Red Robin set up. But it was a sweater. Jason scanned the room. It was a huge fucking mess. He thought of his own apartment (grimy and in disrepair, but utterly spotless) and wondered how anyone could stand to live like this. He slipped one of Roy’s hack drives into the laptop lying on the coffee table and then decided to explore the kitchen out of morbid curiosity.

While he waited for Roy’s script to break through Tim’s firewall Jason checked out the cupboards (empty save for a few boxes of stale crackers), the sink (unspeakable), and the fridge (there was an empty milk carton in the door for some reason, and the shelves were stacked with old takeout containers). He glanced back over his shoulder at the living room. _This is an apartment where someone sleeps, obviously, and gets changed, and works, but no one lives here_.

There was a big blood stain up the back of the couch, but who knew how old that was. Jason flipped the cushion over and found an even worse stain (although this one was probably spaghetti sauce, going by the color). He resisted the urge to tidy up, _God, I’m turning into Alfred_ , and instead sat down to help himself to some of Tim’s intel.

He was just skimming a file that might prove useful when Red Robin came slamming through the window. Jason didn’t even have time to get off the couch. Once second dead silence and the next bam, two feet on the floor, and Tim shoved back the cowl blinked twice and Jason, pointed his grappling hook like it was handgun and fired it straight at Jason’s face.

Jason dived out of the way. Then he caught the grapple by the wire and yanked it from Tim’s hand.

“If you’re here to kick my ass, I’m actually very busy,” Tim said flatly.

“I was swiping your intel actually,” Jason said, tone half-cocky and half-joking. He was nervous suddenly. Why? The kid was obviously exhausted from patrol, it wasn’t like he could take Jason. But it wasn't actually fear for his own safety making him nervous. The replacement’s eyes were almost unfocussed. He looked like he almost wanted it. And Jason couldn’t tell if he was actually seeing that, or if he was seeing what he wanted to see. Either way, he wanted to fucking leave.

He pulled the drive from the laptop and moved towards the window, but Tim already seemed convinced that Jason wasn’t there to fight. He started stripping off his gloves. Jason dipped past him for the window, and Tim moved out of the way fluidly.

“If you wanted intel from the family you could just ask you know,” Tim said.

“Could I?”

“Could you?”

“I don’t know, could I?” Jason says. Then he realized what he’d just said made him sound like an idiot. “Yeah, I don’t know. Didn’t feel like visiting the batcave,” he said.

“We’re all fighting the same war, Jason. Even if Bruce didn’t—doesn’t agree with your methods,” Tim said. _And how do you feel about my methods, replacement?_ Jason didn’t ask.

“Yeah thanks for the unsolicited zen-talk,” Jason scoffed, and climbed out the window. But as he made his way back towards his own apartment, he was thinking not about what Tim had said, but the tone in which he’d said it. Empty and hoarse, like he hadn’t paused to catch his breath for hours. And that sweat slick on his skin, not just where the cowl had touched, but coating him all over.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha oh my god sorry. this took about a thousand years, for the usual reasons, school, work, etc. I was torn between putting out this short chapter or a longer one that would take more time to finish. Went with the short option. please enjoy rate and subscribe leave a comment if you want me to make more lyric videos like this one

Tim had an easy enough time breaking into Jason’s safehouse. He didn’t have an easy time finding it though. Working far outside the law but still against the drug pushers and sex traffickers put the Red Hood on essentially all of Gotham’s shit list. The venn diagram of good guys and criminals that had it out for him was basically a circle.

But Tim was trained by the best, and had the extra advantage of knowing Jason. So it didn’t take him too long. All he had to do was merge Dick’s old data with Bruce’s old data and boom, he’d narrowed the list of locations to a small enough set he could scout them all easily. Dick had yet to update the batcave info on Jason apparently, or he’d have worked it out too. It seemed Jason wasn’t much of a priority, when the whole of Gotham became Dick’s patrol beat.

He scaled down the side of the warehouse and slid in the window. It was shockingly tidy. Compared to Jason’s base of operations, Tim’s looked like a garbage dump. He gave the paint can he was carrying a few shakes. Simple? Yeah. Juvenile? Yeah. But he figured, Jason wants to break into his place and steal his intel? The retaliation doesn’t have to be fancy. It has to be direct.

Tim sprayed a big “Fuck off Red Hood” across the main screens, in blood red.

“Looks fine,” he said aloud, watching the paint running on the monitors. He gave the can another shake, idly. The back of his neck itched where he’d clumsily glued together a swipe he took fighting Killer Croc. He resisted the overwhelming urge to pick at it.

For a brief moment, the edges of things seemed to go hazy, but Tim shook it off. This was what? Day three without sleep? He'd seen Bruce do four. He just needed to focus. Not that breaking into Jason’s safehouse was really helping him focus, but sometimes solving a second problem can help you approach the first.

 

When Tim was a kid chasing after heroes he used to do his homework whenever he got stuck, whenever he lost Batman and Robin’s trail, or laid out the clues and found them incomprehensible.

Sometimes in the middle of a lab report or a history essay he’d be struck by inspiration. Sometimes not.

Admittedly, outsmarting Ra’s Al Ghul and finding a way to bring back Bruce was something of a bigger problem than just the mystery of who the Batman was. But he had training now. He was older now.

He was… god, he blinked hard but nothing in his field of vision cleared. On top of this, he had this feeling like his skin was too tight. It started a day ago and it wasn't going away. Distantly, he heard the purr of a motorcycle engine coming to a halt.

Time to go, probably. He slipped back out the way he came. As he made his way from rooftop to rooftop, working to quickly distance himself from the scene of the crime, he wondered if antagonizing the Red Hood was such a great idea after all. But it  _ was _ pretty funny.

 

*

Jason flipped open his phone and hammered out a text to Roy. 

“The kid is antagonizing me.”

“lol, tell dick to rein him in.”

“No, the other kid.” He flipped the phone shut without bothering to wait for another reply from Roy. The paint was still tacky on the monitors, it hadn’t been drying more than a few minutes. Jason groaned. Admittedly, he had started it, but still. He didn’t expect such a childish reaction. This was something he’d have imagined was more Dick’s style… or his. But Tim was what? Sixteen? If anything, the weird thing was that he  _ didn’t  _ normally do stuff like this.

Finally, he opened his phone again.

“r u calling off the plan or what? I’m all set up.”

“No. I’m coming.” Jason’s phone buzzed again before he could put it back in his pocket.

“Lol.”

“You’re a child, Roy.” He didn’t know why he even bothered texting because less than ten minutes later he was strolling through the Wayne Enterprises building parking garage in a janitor’s uniform, and he had Roy in his ear, so he could have saved his insults up.

“I hung out with Dick on the roof here one time when we were both squirts,” Roy said. Jason made a noncommittal grunt. Wayne Enterprises made his skin itch. He wasn’t really in the mood to swap fun “golden days” stories.

He ducked past two women in slick business suits, avoiding their eyes. They didn’t spare him so much as a second glance.

“So far so good, huh?” Static crackled around Roy’s tinny voice, and Jason pushed the earpiece further in, as if that was gonna help anything.

 

Infiltrating one of the highest-security buildings in Gotham turned out to be easier than Jason had even dared to hope. Not that he could take much credit. He had Roy’s ongoing directions and remote-hacking to credit. Which he wasn’t in any danger of forgetting, because Roy made a habit of reminding him every time a door opened.

“Let’s keep in mind that this was your idea, and I’m doing it for you.”

“Only because if you get caught you can talk your way out of it,” Roy said. Jason snorted.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said.

“Huh, woulda thought you’d be more confident,” someone said. From behind him. Not Roy. Jason whirled to see Dick leaning in the doorway. Not batman. He was wearing a dress shirt and tie, hands in his pockets and hair ruffled, looking like an insufferable GQ model.

“Whoa, imagine seeing you here. On my first day of work!” Jason grinned, although he was sensing… what? An oncoming shouting match probably. For his part, Dick just sighed long-sufferingly. Urgh. He knew even golden boy had a raged-out breaking point where he’d start throwing punches. Jason was instantly fed up with his holier-than-thou routine.

“You could talk to me if you need something. Or if Roy needs something.” Roy faux-dramatically gasped in Jason’s ear. He fought the urge to wince.

“Don’t leave without the alloy, I need it for my new arrows.” Jason jammed a finger in his ear, shutting down the earpiece.

“Haven’t seen you out of uniform in… it feels like a really long time.” Dick didn’t even look mad about the small time heist he just caught Jason carrying out. He seemed like he was meeting Jason for lunch to catch up. 

Jason leaned against the safe he’d been opening. It was already cracked (thanks Roy) but he hadn’t taken anything. He tucked his thumbs into his pockets.

“It’s been a while,” Jason said.

“Missed you at the funeral.”

“I didn’t think I’d be welcome.”

“Jason, you’re…” Always welcome? Not quite, Jason thought. An awkward silence followed. Jason shifted from one foot to the other, trying to decide the next course of action. Run for it? Or just tell Dick he was leaving, and see if he tried to stop him? Maybe a little small talk.

“Well, I’ll get out of your hair. I’m sure you have important papers to sign. One thing though. Tell the kid not to vandalize any more of my shit, okay?” At this, Dick groaned.

“What did he do?”

“Spray painted all the monitors in my safehouse. It was actually pretty funny, I gotta hand it to him.”

“Well, it’s better than trying to kill you. That’s kinda like affection coming from Damian.” There was a second or two of cognitive dissonance where Jason worked out what had gone wrong, communication-wise. He came to a conclusion: not only did Dick not know what the fuck the replacement was doing or where, he also wasn’t really sparing a thought for what he  _ might _ be doing. Jason laughed.

“Uh, no. The other kid.”

“Oh. Oh!” Another uncomfortable silence. Dick’s phone went off. He glanced away for a second, and Jason made himself gone. On his way out of the building, he got the sense that Dick had let him get away just to put an end to their conversation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok anyways full disclosure i planned this fic from start to finish before i even wrote the beginning so thats the good news. bad news is the next chapter at time of this note being written has exactly 0/2000 words done so that might take some time. maybe done by march. anyways ttyl love ya


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINALLY WROTE THE COMFORT (AND ALSO 100X MORE HURT)

It takes a lot of effort to keep your asshole friends from finding out that you don’t like black coffee. Keeping up a cool, brusque facade can be taxing sometimes. That’s why Jason was, at some hour before sunrise but not really what can be considered morning, exiting the 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts carrying a drip coffee with eight sugars in it.

He was headed for his uptown safe house--one he was all but certain golden boy and the demon didn't know about. Not that he was considering the ones they did burned, but he wanted to do some work undisturbed, and the apartment or anywhere his family might conceivably show up was not the spot for that.

Of course, when he got there the lights were on. He was about to just turn heel and leave when he remembered that he had them on timers. Oh right. This loft was supposed to be in use. Roy had helped him set up the papers for it. They'd even hung out there a few nights before he stripped out all the furniture and replaced it with a work bench and weapons storage.

He was relaxed again until he actually got inside and found a trail of blood leading into the bathroom. Great.

“Hey if this is a prank, know that someone will be getting broken bones tonight,” he called. Or it was someone who broke in to murder him, but that seemed unlikely (why would they already be injured?).

The sink was running. He turned the corner and pushed the door the rest of the way open.

He saw the bare skin first. That was what made him lower his weapon. And then when he stepped further in, he could identify him. Tim Drake, the identity thief was slumped over his sink with his suit half-off. His chest was an absolute mess. Bruises up his left side, so dark they were almost black. His face didn’t look that great either.

“What the fuck?” Jason said, tucking his gun away. Tim turned to face him. His lip was split open, and his eyes seemed nearly unfocused, pupils blown wide, deep black circles cutting into skin leached of all other color. And he was grinning. Well, he was making an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

“Heyyy. Big guy. I’m borrowing your sink. Didn’t want to use the one at the McDonald’s.”

“And what, exactly, is wrong with the sink at your place?” Jason folded his arms and leaned up against the doorframe. Tim blinked at the sink like he’s lost sight of it for a second.

“S’pretty far, for one thing. Plus I forgot to pay the heating bill so that sucks.” He clacked the ‘k’ in sucks.

“You know what’s close and definitely has heat?”

“Don’t.”

“The mansion.” Jason wanted to keep glaring Tim down. Tim, for his part, almost looked like he was ready to fight. But Jason had  _ died _ and he didn’t think he’d ever seen someone look so much like a walking corpse. 

“Yeah. Not tripping over myself to get back there. You have other safehouses.”

“So I’m just supposed to leave?”

“You could try to kill me again, if that would make you feel better?”

“Feel better from what?” Jason unfolded his arms, but then he didn’t know what to do with them. Tim was pulling his suit back on, which was actually painful to watch.

“I don’t know. You seem mad. Fuck.” Seemingly, Tim was giving up on the suit. He lost his balance a little, and Jason stepped out of the doorframe knowing he’d be too late to catch him, but he just took a stumbling step back and sat down on the toilet lid.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Jason indicated Tim at large. He shrugged, and then hissed in pain.

“Just usual, normal stuff. Nothing of particular note.”

“Dude, you look like someone put you through a meat grinder.”

“Ha! Someone tried!” Tim had a flash of that half-grin again. Jason almost took a step back. “If you help me put my suit back on I’ll leave,” he said.

“Promise?”

“Scouts honor.”

“As if you were ever a scout,” Jason said, but he shrugged his jacket off and tossed it in the general direction of the couch.

“You don’t know.”

“Golden boy would have been, if he wasn’t busy being a circus freak,” Jason said. He rolled up his sleeves and re-entered the bathroom. Tim’s gaze had shifted towards some empty corner of the room, but he focussed on Jason now.

“I can’t get the right side. If you take right I’ll do the left myself and then it’s no problemo.”

“Yeah…” Up closer, his left side looked even worse. Jason couldn’t help himself from reaching out and giving his ribs a gentle prob. The sound that escaped Tim was less like a whimper and more like a sudden choking noise. He punched Jason in the arm with his right hand. Hard.

“So those are broken, huh?” Jason said.

“Are you helping me or not? It’s only like midnight.”

“Uhhhhh.” While Jason was deciding, Tim fixed him with a glare. It was the glare that cemented it. This kid was so far removed from having anyone pity him, from being cared for, that it never even crossed his mind. He honestly thought Jason would stuff him back in his suit and send him out to die. And Jason was inches from doing that (a minute ago anyways) but that was a  _ Jason _ problem.

Tim snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Hey, tall dark and zombie, are you helping me or what? I have places to be.”

“Uh, no. Decidedly not.”

“What?”

“I’m not a doctor but I’m 88% sure if you go back out there you’ll die.”

“What, from this? This is barely anything--”

Jason prodded Tim in the ribs (a little harder). He curled in on himself with a whine like a punctured accordion.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of the bathroom, huh? I’ve got some pants somewhere.” Jason hauled Tim out of the bathroom and dumped him on the couch. He tracked down his spare sweats and a clean (or clean-ish) t-shirt, and threw them at Tim, who was lying on the couch. His breathing was making a kind of wheezing noise that sent ice into Jason’s stomach.

“Hey, Timmy? Baby bird?”

“What, fucker?” Tim mumbled, cracking one eye open.

“Okay. You’ve got moxie, I’ll give you that. Let’s put clothing that isn’t spandex and kevlar on.”

“Yeah. Give me a minute,” Tim said, but then he just lay there. In the end, he helped minimally while Jason stripped him down to his boxers and then maneuvered him into the clean clothes. Once they were done Jason was just holding the suit with Tim slumped back onto the couch. It was full of shitty patch jobs that Alfred had nothing to do with. He started matching up this awful blood-soaked shed skin with fresh or healing injuries on Tim. Stitches in the shoulder, a matching scar for Tim. Minute rips on the right arm, little scabs on Tim.

“If you go on like this, hey, are you listening to me?” He prodded Tim’s face.

“I’m listening, what?”

“If you keep going like this you’re gonna die.”

“Pfft. What do you care? We’re not brothers, Jason, no matter how you slice it.”

“Maybe we didn’t grow up brothers. I’m never gonna be what Dick is to you. But I think Bruce was for you what he was for me. At one time. So you are my brother. You’re as close to a brother as Dick or the demon kid. Probably closer. With the way things are shaking out… looks like we’re both middle siblings.” This got an almost laugh out of Tim, but it was followed by an ugly wheeze.

“Hey, come here. Come here,” he said. He managed to maneuver Tim so he was leaning on him, and then draped an arm around his shoulders. He was cold.

“No heat at your place, huh?”

“I have the money I was just--” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose, “--distracted.”

“It would kill Dick if something happened to you.”

“I guess.”

“I wouldn’t like it much either.”

“Hmn.”

“What hurts?”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay. Try to rest then.” Jason waited there until Tim was definitely asleep, and then extracted himself and collected some supplies from around the warehouse. He tried to work for about five minutes and promptly gave up, gave in, and spent the next hour watching youtube videos and texting Roy and Kori. When you can’t focus, you can’t focus, there’s no point pushing it.

He told Roy and Kori about the kid. They offered mild concern. Then after an hour or so, he heard a thud and then a sound like a stifled wail. He didn’t process moving. One minute he was at the table in his weird half-kitchen half-workshop, and the next he was crouching down over Tim’s prone form.

“What happened?”

“Fell,” Tim groaned. He was curled in on himself.

“You okay, anything broken? Or… more broken?”

“M’fine. Can you just go away?”

“It’s my safe house.”

“Just go… away from here. Please.” Tim’s voice was muffled and thick. Jason put a hand on his shoulder.

“Tim? Hey, come on.” It took a moment. Almost seemed like minutes, for Tim to uncurl enough that Jason could see his face, but as soon as he could he hooked a hand under Tim’s jaw and tilted his face so they could look at one another.

“Ah,” he said. Tim’s eyes were overflowed with tears. He didn’t look embarrassed or afraid. He just looked spent. “Come on. I got you,” Jason said. He scooped him up off the floor and back onto the couch. He darted away to grab the blanket and his first aid kit.

“You have to take painkillers,” he told Tim. He accepted them without any fight, which was almost worse. This blank, empty Tim was even more alarming than the one from the bathroom, who found all this hilarious.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“None of us have to do anything,” Jason said, leaning back into the couch. He carded a hand through Tim’s hair. It was horribly greasy, and unless he was mistaken, had blood in it. “You need to shower so bad.” When Tim laughed, the unshed tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes, and they made something in Jason feel so twisted up and ugly that he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Tim’s forehead, and Tim, miracle of miracles, reached out and fisted a hand in Jason’s t-shirt and didn’t let go.

“Hang on, okay? I got you,” Jason said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh Jesus this took a long time. I have no excuse (besides like, other fandoms, becoming a game dev, school, dealing with crisis at school newspaper, and general malaise) but i am also not sorry  
> ENJOY


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